Keyword: agriculture

he Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

Our love affair with chocolate is much older than we thought, and newly discovered traces of cocoa on ancient pots suggest it started in the rainforests of what is now Ecuador some 5300 years ago. That’s nearly 1500 years older than earlier evidence, and it shifts the nexus of cocoa production from Central America to the upper Amazon. “This is an incredibly strong demonstration,” says Rosemary Joyce, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study. “It puts to rest any lingering claims that the use of [cocoa] pods … was an invention...

Traces of cocoa dating back 5300 years have been found in ancient pots in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is the oldest proof of cocoa use ever found. It predates the domestication of cocoa by the Olmec and the Maya in Central America by some 1500 years. This evidence was collected in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon, at the Santa Ana La Florida (SALF) archaeological site near Palanda, discovered 16 years ago by the archaeologist Francisco Valdez and his Franco-Ecuadorian team (IRD/INPC) (2). The Mayo Chinchipe, the oldest known Amerindian civilization in the upper Amazon, had consumed cocoa almost continuously from at...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

EurekAlert! ^ | October 31, 2018 | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Using ancient proteins and DNA recovered from tiny pieces of animal bone, archaeologists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (IAET) at the Russian Academy of Sciences-Siberia have discovered evidence that domestic animals -cattle, sheep, and goat - made their way into the high mountain corridors of southern Kyrgyzstan more than four millennia ago... in many of the most important channels of the Silk Road itself, including Kyrgyzstan's Alay Valley (a large mountain corridor linking northwest China with the oases cities of Bukhara and Samarkand), very little is...

Those pale button mushrooms in your supermarket hardly do justice to the diversity of fungi. The world hosts an incredible array of these important organisms—and mycologists are discovering more than 2000 new species a year, including ones that live on driftwood, bat guano, and even an oil painting. That’s according to a new report, titled State of the World’s Fungi, from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a botanical research institution in Richmond, U.K. The lavishly illustrated overview covers the usefulness of fungi (think beer, bread, and penicillin, for starters) as well as the serious threats that some fungi pose to...

Feb. 2, 2005 — You wouldn't know it by current world events, but humans actually evolved to be peaceful, cooperative and social animals. In a new book, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis goes against the prevailing view and argues that primates, including early humans, evolved not as hunters but as prey of many predators, including wild dogs and cats, hyenas, eagles and crocodiles. Despite popular theories posed in research papers and popular literature, early man was not an aggressive killer, argues Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences. Sussman's book, "Man the Hunted:...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

President Trump will deliver the keynote address Saturday at a convention for American farmers in Indianapolis, becoming the first president to accept the invitation in nearly three decades. Trump is scheduled to attend the 91st annual Future Farmers of America Convention and Expo to speak about how his administration has helped spur agriculture, the Indianapolis Star reported. Earlier this month, Trump announced his decision to permit year-round sales of E15 -- automotive fuel that's 15 percent ethanol -- a move seen as particularly helpful for the farm states.

The global food system’s environmental impact is large and growing. Nearly a quarter of all planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions come from food production and associated land-use change. And as incomes rise and more people move to cities, consumption of meat and dairy - foods with outsized climate impacts - is on the rise. Limiting the global rise in meat consumption - in particular, beef, lamb and goat - is critical for reining in runaway warming. Ruminant meats have the highest resource requirements of any foods we eat. Producing beef, for example, uses 20 times the land and emits 20 times...

Some 3,500 years ago, there was already a brisk trade in fish on the shores of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea. This conclusion follows from the analysis of 100 fish teeth that were found at various archeological sites in what is now Israel. The saltwater fish from which these teeth originated is the gilthead sea bream, which is also known as the dorade. It was caught in the Bardawil lagoon on the northern Sinai coast and then transported from Egypt to sites in the southern Levant. This fish transport persisted for about 2,000 years, beginning in the Late Bronze Age and...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

Democratic Candidate Criticizes Agriculture Industry, Suggests Workers Transition To Renewable Energy Instead The Democratic nominee in Georgia’s gubernatorial election had to walk back comments that suggested the agriculture and hospitality industries weren’t worth working in. The controversy began when Stacey Abrams was giving a speech at Georgia Southern University as part of her “We Are Georgia” bus tour. “I want to create a lot of different jobs because people shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality to make a living in Georgia. Why not create renewable energy jobs because — I’m going to tell ya’ll a secret — climate...

<p>POPLARVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Six foals sired by a cream-colored stallion called DeSoto scamper across a pasture in southwest Mississippi — the first new blood in a century for a line of horses brought to America by Spanish conquistadors and bred by Choctaw Indians who were later forced out of their ancestral homelands.</p>

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The process of coastal groundwater discharge makes it possible for humans to collect drinkable freshwater directly where it emerges at the coast of the island... "The porous volcanic soils quickly absorb rain, resulting in a lack of streams and rivers," Lipo said. "Fortunately, water beneath the ground flows downhill and ultimately exits the ground directly at the point at which the porous subterranean rock meets the ocean. When tides are low, this results in the flow of freshwater directly into the sea. Humans can thus take advantage of these sources of freshwater by capturing the water at these points." ...He...

Pecan growers in the Southeast are in the orchards this morning assessing the damage from the CAT 4 Hurricane Michael that ripped through last night causing excessive winds and dumping large amounts of rain in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and now making its way through the Carolinas. Pecan growers with early pecan varieties like the Pawnee were scrambling earlier this week to get as much harvested as possible before the category 4 (at time of landfall) hurricane Michael, ripped through the southern states with wind gust of up to 75 miles per hour in pecan producing areas of South Georgia, South...

EurekAlert ^ | October 3, 2018 | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Çatalhöyük was a large settlement inhabited from about 7100 BC to 5600 BC by early farmers, and is located in what is now central Turkey. The site showcases a fascinating layout in which houses were built directly next to each other in every direction and stands out for its excellent preservation of finds... For this study, the researchers analyzed vessel sherds from the West Mound of Çatalhöyük, dating to a narrow timeframe of 5900-5800 BC towards the end of the site's occupation. The vessel sherds analyzed came from open bowls and jars, as shown by reconstructions and had calcified residues...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...